JAN MOIR: Divorce? No, this was an Armageddon of aggression

No divorce is ever easy, but what to feel about the couple who have lost nearly everything and blown 1.7 million on five years of venom-fuelled litigation and child custody battles One word: sorrow.

Yes, even despite the fact that the ex-Mr and Mrs are both practising lawyers themselves. One must muffle the temptation to think rather gleefully: well, now the pair of you know how we feel after a brutal shakedown by the legal system.

After all, it is rare that any lawyer walks away from a prolonged divorce battle with empty pockets. Quite the opposite, M’lud. As we all know, for them it is never really about the court case; ultimately it is always about the fees.

'Lose-lose situation': Solicitors Giles Kavanagh, left, and Anna-Marie Harvey Kavanagh spent five years and virtually all their money battling over the terms of their acrimonious divorce

Yet what a mess this lose-lose situation has turned out to be. Surely two intelligent adults could have found a more sophisticated solution to their differences while safeguarding their children’s future and emotional wellbeing

After all, divorce is harrowing enough for kids at the best of times. You have to wonder what kind of bone-headed cussedness made these parents fight on and on and on, until nothing was left. Surely there has to be a better and more civilised way to dissolve a marriage Even the judges were appalled.

Giles Kavanagh and Anna-Marie Harvey Kavanagh must have been happy once. They had a lovely life, living in a 3.2 million, seven-bedroom mansion set in half-an-acre of prime Surrey land with their three children, all of whom attended private schools.

He earned nearly 500,000 a year as — irony of ironies — a litigation lawyer, and is even feted in promotional material from his chambers for his ‘good strategic sense’.

Meanwhile, Mrs Kavanagh had put her legal career on hold for a while to bring up the children. And in the end, she was determined to exact a heavy price from her husband for that. Did he make her stay at home It hardly seems likely. Surely it was her choice, and a rather luxurious choice at that

However, after the relationship curdled, the couple could agree on nothing. Mediation did not work. And prolonged custody battles always suggest to me that parents are putting their own best interests first, not those of the children.

The last clash was a request for more maintenance for Mrs Kavanagh, primarily because her husband had just been given a huge pay rise. She wanted an increase from 44,000 to 88,000 a year, on top of the 12,000 per child he pays for their school fees. Request denied.

Perhaps having a civilised divorce is a contradiction in terms, but this particular Armageddon of aggression must take the cake.

The Kavanaghs' former matrimonial home: 'There has to be a better way,' writes Jan Moir

At the end of the fighting, the Kavanaghs have spent nearly all their savings. The family home, the children’s inheritance, their life savings All gone. Burned down in a fury of legal action and court hearings; frittered away in fury and ever-mounting lawyer’s bills.

The only strategy appeared to be victory at all costs. The only moral is this: there has to be a better way.

Earlier this month, the Law Commission launched a consultation aimed at rectifying anachronisms in the creaking 1969 divorce laws. Even now, judges receive no guidance about the fairest way to divide a couple’s assets, while there are no set rules on how to divide belongings accumulated before the marriage.

We have to move with the times. Equality in all things means that no longer is the little wife confined to the home; she must be assumed to have the capacity for independence, too.

There needs to be clearer definition about the extent to which divorcees carry on supporting one another after the marriage ends. Otherwise, more and more separations will end in a ghastly, draining bunfight like this.

Instead, they should be encouraged to be generous to each other, to get through the divorce as quickly and cleanly as possible and then start to rebuild their lives.

A change in the law just might save warring couples such as this from themselves.

Meanwhile, a new HBO documentary to be shown in America next week focuses on divorce from the point of view of the children involved. More than two dozen kids, aged from five to ten, took part to explain to parents how to make a difficult divorce easiest for them.

Their suggestions include ‘Try to make sure that your kids get both parents kind of equally’ and ‘Don’t break our hearts’.

Sense at last. And they didn’t need a law degree, a sense of righteousness or a 1.7 million legal bill to get there.

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Gaga's gone to pot

The meat dress was shocking, the fetish shoes a hoot, the songs terrific. She became a huge pop star without being classically Britney-pretty. Yes, I loved Lady Gaga for all the right reasons.

But smoking pot onstage, as she did in Amsterdam this week My respect has gone in a puff of smoke. Gags has been looking increasingly frazzled and unkempt, even by her own wild standards. I wonder, is this punishing world tour beginning to take its toll

Still. That’s not what is really shocking. Where did she get that silly and affected British accent from Perhaps she borrowed it from Madonna.

Gone to pot Lady Gaga smoked what appeared to be a cannabis joint on stage in Amsterdam this week

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Why we'd just dye without a bit of colour in our lives

Television presenter Miriam O'Reilly

Fiona Bruce has said that she feels that she has to dye her grey hair to appear on television. I suspect that 48-year-old Fiona would still dye her hair if she was a Nuneaton bank clerk, but it’s all about the BBC’s sexist/ageist approach these days, isn’t it Everyone’s a victim.

Naturally, oldie expert Miriam O’Reilly (right) has seized on the great grey non-issue.

The former presenter who sued the BBC for ageism (and won) has declared that she can’t get a job in television because (she’s too boring for words) bosses favour glam young things instead of the likes of her.

So now she is letting her grey hang out — and she feels it is a joy. Miriam has said she was humiliated — humiliated, I tell you! — by television producers insisting she had to dye her grey roots black, but I’m on their side.

Come on; it’s got to be one thing or the other. Lots of women look absolutely terrific with grey hair, but nothing is worse than that racoon stripe of rootsy greige among the lush thickets of Napoli Noir. And think of the continuity problem!

But Miriam is a victim, too, tyrannised by the lookist demands of a visual medium. Poor diddums. I would argue that hair dye is, in fact, a marvellous thing. It’s not a tool of media oppression, Miriam.If anything, it has set women free.If it was suddenly withdrawn from the shelves tomorrow morning, there would be rioting in the streets.

In her 2006 book, I Remember Nothing, the late Hollywood screenwriter Nora Ephron suggested that the reason women of 40, 50 and 60 don’t look the frumpy, dessicated way they used to had nothing to do with improved diet or feminism, but everything to do with hair dye.

She told of once going to a fashionable New York restaurant, to a lunch in honour of a woman who had just been released from 12 years in prison for murdering her diet-doctor boyfriend. The ex-con was the only woman in the restaurant who had grey hair.

Like exercise and living well, hair dye is a powerful weapon in the war against ageing. I hate to break it to Miriam, but women outside television circles use it, too. And, whisper it… so do some men.

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Horror beyond imagining

The luring of two unarmed policewomen into a murderous trap marked a new low in British life. WPCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes thought they were answering a call to just another suspected burglary on a Manchester estate.

Instead, they died in a hail of bullets and a grenade thrown by a killer lying in wait.

It is a truly terrible crime, one which reminded me of the opening episode of BBC1’s excellent new police drama, Good Cop. Broadcast three weeks ago and set in Liverpool, it features a similar plotline, where two policemen are enticed to a house to investigate a noisy party, only to discover it is a set-up.

One of the policemen is beaten up so badly he later dies. His colleague, PC Rocksavage (Warren Brown), finds himself on a dark path of retribution and grieving. His journey takes him to the very moral heart of doing the right thing and being a good policeman – not to mention human being.

I’m not suggesting that the Manchester killer was inspired by Good Cop, but both the TV drama and the real murders point to a shocking hatred of the police by lawbreaking malcontents in society. Look at the ‘police killer’ trolls, posting their vicious messages online.

What happened this week reminds us all that policemen and women start their shift never knowing if they will actually finish it and come home again. Anything can happen, and they have to deal with it. That’s real courage.

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Can I come out from behind the sofa now Thank goodness the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s tour of the South Pacific is over at last.

I’m sorry but am I the only one slightly embarrassed by all the tiki-fabulous malarkey; the grass-skirt swaying, the silly dancing, the goofy expressions under the giant flowery headbands, not to mention being carried aloft on thrones by native pallbearers Cringe!

Wills and Kate did a great job, but it was all a bit too Tintin In The Congo for comfort.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge wore floral headdresses on the island of Tuvalu during the final leg of their Far East tour

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More embarrassments. I can hardly bear to watch Nick Clegg’s apology for being Nick Clegg. He is saying sorry for failing to keep his promise on tuition fees, but it’s like watching some soppy sixth-former blubbing because his girlfriend caught him snogging someone else.

No wonder an autotune version made for the satirical website The Poke has already gone viral.

The Cleggster has sportingly agreed to it being released as a single for charity, thereby lancing the boil.